An 'A' for Effort
by Hey There Delilah
Summary: Cho Chang has some stupid ideas, but I think Katie's glad she heard about this one. YES, it's KBOW.


Katie Bell had always thought Alicia Spinnet had been a tad too gullible for her own good.

"I heard Cho Chang telling her friends that if you can tie a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue, it means you're a _really_ good kisser," said Alicia, grabbing a single cherry from the plastic bag full of them in front of her.

Katie exchanged skeptical glances with her other friend, Angelina Johnson.

"That's probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Angelina replied, stretching her legs out on the thick green grass in front of her. "I mean, this _is_ coming from Cho 'I-put-pebbles-in-my-pumpkin-juice-to-get-my-daily-dose-of-minerals' Chang."

Alicia, who had been scrutinizing her cherry very carefully, plucked it from it's tiny brown stem and threw it towards her friend. "I happen to believe it's true."

"Well then let's see you do it!" Katie said. She didn't believe that it meant you were a good kisser, but she certainly wanted to see her friend try.

Alicia nodded and popped the stem into her mouth, working it this way and that, before finally, a few minutes later, she pulled it back out. Sure enough, there was a tiny knot in the center of the stem. She beamed.

"Give me that," Angelina growled, and snatched the bag of cherries off the ground. She pulled one out and detached the small red fruit from it's stem before tossing it over her shoulder.

"You're wasting the best part," Katie muttered as she grabbed the discarded cherry. She inspected it for dirt, and after finding it clean enough, she put it in her mouth.

Although it took quite a bit longer for Angelina to accomplish the task, she too, pulled a knotted cherry stem from her lips and smiled knowingly at Alicia.

"Here, you try it, Katie," Alicia said, handing her a stem that had already been pulled.

"No way!" She pushed her friend's arm away and seized the bag of her favorite fruit before settling back down on the soft grass. She'd rather spend her last hour before quidditch practice enjoying the heat of the sun and the sounds of the birds than attempting to tie a silly cherry stem into a knot. She finished the cherries off and stuffed the bag full of stems into her pocket. She'd throw them away later.

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Quidditch practice had been horrible. It seemed like every day that passed, Oliver Wood became more and more crazed about the sport and worked his team much harder than he needed to.

Halfway through this particular practice, though, it had started storming. Cold rain had come down in large drops and bright white lightning had streaked across the sky, but that didn't stop Oliver from torturing his team.

Once it got too dark to see, he called off practice. Each member of the team slowly trudged off the field towards the locker rooms, in need of a nice, warm shower.

Katie's muscles were aching and her hands were sore from having the hard, plastic-like material of the quaffle slap against her palms over and over again. She ran her hands along the cool tile walls of the shower before turning it on and letting the warm water massage her skin.

If she didn't know any better, she would have thought she had fallen asleep standing up. She shook from her head the daydreams that had kept her mind occupied while the shower water slowly lost its warmth. She stepped out of the shower and dried herself off, her teeth chattering as the cold air of the locker room tickled her skin. Angelina and Alicia were long gone, along with everyone else, Katie assumed, and had left nothing behind besides a thick layer of condensation on the mirrors.

When she reached down to grab her shorts to put them back on, a small bag fell out of the pocket.

The cherry stems!

Curiosity got the best of her, and after she had dressed completely, she popped one of the small brown sticks in her mouth and maneuvered it around until she spit into the palm of her hand a tiny knotted cherry stem. Surprised at how fast she was able to do it, she decided to try it again; maybe it was only luck that she was able to do it correctly the first time.

Again she tried, and again she was just as successful. Fascinated by her ability to accomplish such a silly task (and also by the fact that perhaps she _was_ a really good kisser!) she cleared away some of the water on the mirror and leaned in close to watch as her tongue bent and twisted the small cherry stem as it pleased.

Katie was so absorbed in the actions of her tongue that she didn't even notice her captain slip into the girls' showers to check for anything they may have left behind.

"Katie?"

Oliver's voice startled her so much that she almost choked on the stem she had in her mouth. Blushing, she turned her head and spit it out onto the gray tiled floor. Oliver took a step forward to see what it was she had spat out so forcefully, and was thoroughly confused when he saw what she had been chewing on.

"A cherry stem?" he asked, picking it up between two fingers. "Please don't tell me you forgot that you're not supposed to eat this part?"

Katie shook her head violently as she took in the sight of her captain freshly showered. He looked good with wet hair. Though, technically, he looked good all the time.

"Well then what were you doing with this in your mouth?" he asked, smirking.

"No reason, really," she mumbled.

"I find that hard to believe. I think you've gone crazy."

"I was trying to tie it into a knot with my tongue!" she cried.

"You _have_ gone crazy!" Oliver stated, chuckling. He grabbed the bag of stems from her hand and held them up. "Merlin, a whole pack of them! Honestly, Katie, why would you want to tie them into knots with your tongue?"

By now, Katie was blushing furiously. She really didn't feel like telling a cute boy that she was curious to see if she was a good kisser, and had stooped so low as to find out from a stupid stem from a stupid fruit. And the fact that this had started because of something _Cho Chang_ had said made her feel _really_ foolish.

"Just because... because if you _can_ do it, then you're... well, it's just very, _very_ hard to do, and almost no one can," she said matter-of-factly.

She watched in horror as Oliver took one of the stems from the small bag and put it in his mouth. Seconds later, he stuck his tongue out, displaying the knotted stem for her to see.

"Wasn't _too_ hard," he said. "But really, why would you do this?"

Studying the toes of her sneakers carefully, she muttered the real reason.

"It WHAT?" Oliver nearly doubled over laughing, clutching his stomach as though it would fall to the floor at any minute. Katie frowned and kept her eyes moving quickly around the room; everywhere but at Oliver, for she didn't want him to see the tears that had sprung to her eyes.

She knew it was a load of bull. And now she had embarrassed herself in front of her captain, her crush. She wanted to be anywhere but where she was at the moment. If only the floor would open up and swallow her whole...

Oliver stopped laughing, but still had a strange twinkling in his eyes that Katie wasn't used to seeing. He took a step toward her, causing her to take a step backwards. Oliver grinned. The footsteps continued until Oliver had backed her up to a wall, and she had nowhere to go.

Before she knew what was happening, Oliver's lips were on her own. At first, she was too shocked to respond, but he was a persistent boy, and after a few awkward moments of him kissing idle lips, Katie reacted. Her right arm went up around his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair, and her left wrapped around his waist, bringing him closer to her. If it hadn't been for his body pressing hers up against the wall, she was sure her legs would have turned to jelly and her body would have melted to the floor in a puddle of goo.

After a few moments, the two broke apart.

"That," Oliver breathed, "was how you tell if you're a good kisser or not."

Katie's jaw was slack. She wanted to say something, but her brain wasn't working properly.

"I give you an 'A'," Oliver said, grinning. Katie was about to smile, but he continued. "For effort. An 'A' for effort."

He grinned evilly at her and avoided the hand that came flying towards his face before he took off in a mad dash out of the locker room. She started to follow, but stopped herself. It would be much more humorous having Oliver run all around the castle before realizing that Katie hadn't given chase.

**(-------page breakers aren't working so pretend there's one here! yay! linelinelineline------)**

**I'm sure you've all read a story just like this because cherry stem stories are all over the place, but I really wanted to write one with Oliver and Katie. So yeah, plot isn't exactly mine (although whose, I have no clue) but the little bitty details are. This is the product of 3 days of having hour long gaps between classes. I was bored and missing my boyfriend. I get to see his sexy ass tonight though, woo!**

**I've also started like... 28 different versions of that Oliver story I promised you, but I don't like any of them. I can't get them started right, so be patient with that. I do have some pictures already drawn though. I might post them up on my profile for no reason soon, so keep checking back to see if I have. (Probably not though, muahahaha)**

**I have a dumb question for all you Australian folks out there (if there are any reading this). Actually this question could be asked to a lot of you people living in other countries and such. So anyone who isn't in the summer season RIGHT NOW, this is for you. This has been driving me crazy thinking about it. I could have just looked it up online, but I'm kinda ditzy and retarded and junk, so I'll just ask you here. Your seasons are opposite (or at least different) than the United States, right? So... do you have your break from school when it's summer THERE... or do you get out the same time us American's do? I don't want to sound stupid because it seems so logical to me that you get out when it's summer where you live, but I was reading a story on fictionpress a while back by someone who lived in Australia, and it was when I had just gotten out for summer vacation, and THEY were talking about going to the beach for the summer and I was like WHOA... HOLD UP. And no, I wasn't reading something that hadn't been updated since 2002; it was being updated regularly, so I was reading it as it was being posted. But yeah, that's it. I'm just a curious/stupid American and I want to know. And if our season are in sync, then I'll go ahead and say sorry for being ignorant since I won't reply since this is a one shot.**


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